Fascism came from the massive upheaval caused by Word War One, and was basically just about codifying that as a means for governing a state in perpetuity.
Correct. That historical perspective isn't mutually exclusive with what I was saying. From the development of government propaganda to price controls, regulations, government funded transportation networks, education, healthcare, retirement, racial policies, and Keynesian stimuli, US progressivism (and the rise of the Democrats) is an outgrowth of the "massive upheavals" of the World Wars and an attempt to perpetuate wartime policies and a military-like structure in post-war civilian life.
"Reducing emissions" doesn't mean government mandates or intervention to reduce emissions.
But not the majority.
I didn't say a majority. In our system of government, the popular vote is irrelevant, and for good reason. And as even the WP pointed out, "losing the popular vote in an electoral-college election isn't the same as losing the popular vote in a popular-vote election".
You were literally in the very last two sentences calling for international agreements.
Not at all. I was saying that before spending any money on those areas, we should get political agreement, both domestically and internationally. The burden is on people who want work in those areas to get those agreements first. Personally, I want neither the spending nor the agreements.
If the executive branch was responsible to congress, the voters, or just generally responsible at all, then he wouldn't try and fire everyone who had ever gone to a climate change conference.
Trump needs to make a budget proposal to Congress. As such, he needs to know where money is currently spent, and a judgment on where money should be spent. For that, he needs to collect information. Since the Republican Congress is wary about spending more money on climate science, it makes sense for Trump to pay particular attention to those aspects of spending. He may then choose to submit a budget that greatly reduces spending for climate research, and Congress may choose to approve it. That's the way our government works, and that's why he is requesting that information.
Yeah. That sounds nice. Unfortunately, your candidate
Trump isn't "my candidate", I simply don't suffer from your knee-jerk opposition to him. I didn't vote for him, but so far, I have no problem with his cabinet choices or his pre-inauguration actions.
That's capitalism: a system where it's possible to gain an unearned income just from already owning capital.
That's possible. It's also possible that you lose capital by investing. That's why most billionaires in the US today did so through their own work, rather than inheritance.
The trick is in figuring out what exactly is the means by which capitalists are able to leverage an unearned income, so you can get rid of that.
Why would you want to "get rid of that"? That's where business investments, retirement benefits, government infrastructure investments, insurance, and pretty much every other long term benefit comes from. If you got rid of that, you'd simply end up with a lot of individually owned corporations (like the Koch brothers) that ordinary people would have no ability to invest in.
Picture a society where ownership of the means of production is widely and fairly evenly distributed -- in individual hands, not through the government.
Such a society doesn't exist. If you have free markets, you get a high degree of inequality, but even the poorest people in a free market economy tend to be better off than they would be in a low inequality society. That is, reducing inequality makes everybody poorer.
Socialism, communism, capitalism—none of those have anything particular to do with mass state-sponsored murder
Socialism and communism certainly do. Their principle tenet is to give more power and more information to the state. Once you do that, the people running the state will use that and transform your communist utopia into a dictatorship. Invariably.
You are right that capitalism has nothing to do with state-sponsored murder. At best, you might say that capitalism results in privately sponsored murders, although that seems to be historically much less common.
It's possible (though by no means certain) that a centrally planned economy could work now, with modern analytics and data gathering (if you could somehow avoid corruption distorting the data too badly), but it definitely couldn't work almost a century ago.
Well, think about that. In order to perform central economic planning, the state would have to gather data about all the buying preferences, interests, work productivity, skills, capabilities, and motivations of every citizen. Even if that were possible, that kind of data collection would result in a totalitarian state, whose power would invariably be abused by its leaders.
but it definitely couldn't work almost a century ago.
Communism didn't fail because there wasn't enough computational power around (Marx never even considered computational or analytic power as an essential component of communism). It failed because it turned out that even very modest data collection by the state and very modest transfer of economic power to the state immediately resulted in totalitarianism. Collecting more data and giving more economic power to the state isn't going to fix that problem.
My statement was simply that "Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump."
Now, most of the characteristics of fascism don't apply to either Trump or Clinton: neither is a nationalist or totalitarian, neither advocates fascist gender roles, and neither has the weird relationship with modernism what fascists have.
Where Trump and Clinton differ is primarily on the economy. And the core fascist idea about the economy is:
Fascism presented itself as a third position, alternative to both international socialism and free market capitalism.[169] While fascism opposed mainstream socialism, it sometimes regarded itself as a type of nationalist "socialism", to highlight their commitment to national solidarity and unity.[170][171] Fascists opposed international free market capitalism, but supported a type of productive capitalism.[173] [...] Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production.[180] Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector, and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state.[181] Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive, but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.[181] While fascism accepted the importance of material wealth and power, it condemned materialism, which it identified as being present in both communism and capitalism, and criticized materialism for lacking acknowledgement of the role of the spirit.[182] In particular, fascists criticized capitalism not because of its competitive nature nor support of private property, which fascists supported—but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged bourgeois decadence, and alleged indifference to the nation.[183] Fascism denounced Marxism for its advocacy of materialist internationalist class identity, which fascists regarded as an attack upon the emotional and spiritual bonds of the nation and a threat to the achievement of genuine national solidarity.[184]
Now, tell me, does that sound more like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
Fascism is about war, and what it takes to create a state which is maximally ready for combat.
Well, fascism is about many ideas. But even if you worry about foreign military intervention, Hillary's record is quite militaristic. You can hardly accuse someone of running on a program of militarism and war mongering who actually ran on statements like this:
I would be very, very cautious. I think I'd be a lot slower. She has a happy trigger. You look, she votes for the wars, she goes in Libya.
Seems like he was running on a promise of less foreign military intervention and less use of the military than Clinton, doesn't it?
egarding the Fascist position on economics: it's oddly centrist. Given how extreme the rest of Fascism is you might expect something utterly totalitarian, but it had a mix of public and private ownership, central planning of only some of the means of production, social welfare, etc. Only somewhat more totalitarian than what we have today.
Well, yes, we live in a progressive welfare state with high taxes and high regulations that is what Democrats advocate, and it is what populists like. The fact that these economic ideas are popular doesn't change the fact that these are also close to the core tenets of fascist economics. After all, what do you think got the NSDAP or Mussolini elected?
Once you recognize that, you'll recognize why so many people have rejected Hillary's economic and political ideas. See, it isn't just monocled fat cats who vote for lower corporate taxes or less regulation, it's also people who recognize that that kind of approach to economics is broken.
The core concept of fascism is state capitalism: the collusion of the state and business capital, with the state picking winners and propping up monolithic leaders of different industries, eliminating fair competition, etc, in the process, all "for the good" of the nation as some top-down unified whole, but with equality no part of the equation
Yes, and those ideas are at the core of the Democrats' and Clinton's political program.
However, calling that "state capitalism" is a misnomer; that kind of economic system is not a form of capitalism, just like "crony capitalism" isn't a form of capitalism; both of those are politically motivated, misleading terms.
The rejection of unearned income (which, not free markets, is the defining characteristic of capitalism), and the aim of a fairer distribution of wealth, is not fascism but socialism
It is true that both fascism and socialism have these as goals. The distinguishing feature between them is that socialism advocates public ownership of the means of production, while fascism advocates strongly regulated private ownership of the means of production (what you called "state capitalism" above).
(which, mind you, need not be statist; there is such a thing as libertarian socialism, or free market socialism)
"Libertarian socialism" would be a society in which people voluntarily behave according to socialist principles; there is a better name for that society, it's called "communism", and it's Marx's hypothetical endpoint of history. It doesn't exist.
And the concept of "free market socialism" makes no sense: the whole point of socialism is public ownership of the means of production. You can't have that and simultaneously have anything like a free market.
Some European parties advocate something they call "social democracies" or "democratic socialism", a blend of democracy, regulated market economies, and private enterprise, but in practice, Europe has largely abandoned the idea.
So declarations of a desire to do many things that are a clear violation of the Constitution of the United States and in some cases violations of international laws and treaties endorsed by the USA are not a threat to Democracy?
Both Clinton and Trump are equally guilty of such declarations. That's nothing unusual either: it's why we have SCOTUS and Congress.
It is abundantly clear that you don't know what fascism is. Maybe this will help.
I suggest you actually read that article.
Fascism is perhaps too strong a word to describe Trump's ideology.
It is. Neither Clinton nor Trump are "Nationalist" or "Totalitarian". The most important point after that is "Economy" and "Action", both of which describe Clinton's progressive and activist ideas much better than Trump's capitalism. That's why I was saying "Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump."
You are a fucking idiot if you don't see the difference. He is literally setting up a fascist regime.
Probably the primary ideological idea of fascism is a rejection of capitalism and unearned income, and demands for a "fair" redistribution of wealth; fascist leaders usually are people who become powerful and wealthy through politics, not through running businesses or inheritance. Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump.
At this point, I see no indications that Trump is a threat to democracy. He is simply a thin-skinned, inexperienced businessman-turned-politician. He'll do his job for four years (or maybe eight) and then hand power over to the next president, whoever that may be. So, stop the hyperventilating and fear mongering and enjoy the show.
...Reducing emmissions, IS planetary climate engineering.
Yes, but the science on that is settled: people pretty much universally agree that reducing emissions is a good thing in principle.
Why the hell do you think that?
Why do I think that installing giant space shades or changing the land albedo on a massive scale requires international agreements? Well, gee, why don't you reflect on that a little.
But it sounds like you're suggesting we stop all efforts until we get the freaking U.N. to approve a research grant. Ha!
No, I'm suggesting that the executive branch be responsible to Congress and voters. Personally, I want lots of funding for cancer research, and little funding for climate research, because the former does me a lot of good, while the latter is irrelevant to me. Apparently, a lot of other voters think the same way.
ooloorie has declared we've learned all we need to learn, that there is nothing more to learn. all current questions are answered.
Are you illiterate? Where did I say that? I am simply saying that Trump is entirely justified in determining who these people are, how much money we are spending on them, and what they are doing with that money. That's his job as the president (the job, you may have noticed, that he got elected todo). We can have a debate about the spending levels for climate research afterwards, including what people actually want.
As far as I'm concerned, I am happy to remain ignorant about the state of the global climate in 2100 because I'll be dead. I'd much rather see that money spent on medical research because that actually benefits me. It's just the kind of selfish prick that I am.
you're so dumb you don't even know what you don't know. danning krunig (spelling) is in full effect.
That's "Dunning Kruger", and you should reflect on that yourself. Your model of government funding appears to be that federal research funding should be awarded without a lot of checks, supervision, public disclosure, or public debate. I happen to disagree.
I mean, what you're suggesting would imply that a national stock market could not suffer a crash because capital would flow into the market to make up for local sell-offs
No, not at all. People sell stocks if they believe that they are likely going to lose money. A crash occurs when many people share the belief that they are going to lose money based on observing each others' behavior. But remember that even in a crash, for every seller, there is a buyer.
You're ignoring the fact that the divestiture is itself a price signal to the market and weakens confidence in the stock; yet this is the essence of how price-setting works!
The problem with that argument is that I know why you are selling your stock: you don't like fossil fuels. So, your behavior doesn't weaken my confidence in the stock, it merely weakens my confidence in your rationality.
And even if you manage to conceal your motivations and trick others into believing that there is an actual weakness in the stock in order to depress the stock price (probably illegal in the US), you can't fool the corporate management: they know how much profit they are actually making and how much their assets are actually worth, so if the stock becomes substantially undervalued in their own, informed judgment, they will take the company private.
As I was saying: Well, yes, and the same kind of people who believe that stock market prices are a fiction based on irrational investors, and that people who make their livelihood with investments are useless parasites living off unearned income,those are the people who believe that divestment works for reducing stock prices
How much will sea level rise by 2100? Nobody really knows.
Here is the range of predictions, including error bars, from the IPCC.
We can make reasonably good guesses, but knowing whether it's going to be half a meter or a meter, to give two possibilities) would be very useful in deciding what to do about it.
In what way does a foot more or less make much of a difference? A third of the Netherlands lies below sea level; those kinds of modest changes just aren't a big deal for a wealthy nation like ours.
And why would, say, $5 billion / year not be enough to figure that out, instead of the $9 billion we are spending? And maybe we are spending even more.
Budgets and spending need to be justified, and because we don't have unlimited amounts of money, we need to make tradeoffs. It's the job of the Trump administration to figure out where the money is spent right now, whether it is spent wisely, and what tradeoffs to make. If you can make a dollars and cents argument for current spending levels, make it. Waving your hands and saying "it would be very useful" isn't a rational argument about the federal budget.
Personally, I think the rational thing to do is to shift most of that climate change money to research in nuclear and fusion energy, material science, new transportation technologies, and cancer research. Those things are much more "Important to know" than expensive guesses about whether sea levels will have risen by 2 ft or 3ft half a century after I'm dead.
The point is that if you take the position that the intelligence community was truthful on Iraq and the only people who lied were Bush and Cheney, then Clinton's vote wasn't just "a mistake", it was a deliberate and callous choice.
In any case, what actually happened is slightly more complex. The intelligence report came in two versions, one classified, one unclassified. The unclassified report was misrepresenting the situation, and that's all Hillary ever bothered to read. That means that Trump is justified in distrusting intelligence reports and Clinton showed a callous disregard for American lives by not doing her homework on such an important issue. That is, both the intelligence community and Hillary come out of the Iraq vote like a basket of deplorables, and "I made a mistake" doesn't cut it.
Well, that logically also means either Hillary Clinton lied about Iraq herself, or that she was derelict in her duty to inform herself, or it means the CIA lied to Hillary Clinton, doesn't it?
the illegal access to Podesta's email account was not in fact the result of [Russian intelligence]
Well, it was certainly not the result of US intelligence!
What the release of the Clinton E-mails shows is that (1) the people around Hillary Clinton were incompetent when it came to E-mail security, and (2) Hillary Clinton and the DNC had a lot of dirty laundry.
Who actually released those E-mails hardly matters. Obviously, it was someone who wanted to hurt Hillary. So what? That's how adversarial systems work. I don't really care whether it was the Russians, Assange, or the Saudis, except perhaps to thank them for their efforts.
Delavan told The New York Times he had intended to type "illegitimate," a typo he still has not forgiven himself for making. The email was a phishing scam that ultimately revealed Podesta's password to hackers. Soon after, WikiLeaks began releasing 10 years of his emails.
The Russian psychic warfare department strikes again! We really need to stop those evil Russians meddling with our democracy! Who knows in what other nefarious ways they use their psychic superpowers!
It's adding more and more crap like this to new cars that keeps them from getting cheaper over time. The average new car (in constant dollars) has actually gotten about 30% more expensive since 1980, while the price of a new PC has plummeted.
You think you can defend against a malicious hypervisor?
With current hardware, no. With future hardware, yes. The problem is not much different from SIM cards or credit card chips: secure hardware running in a hostile environment.
Clearly, reducing aggregate demand by 0.1% will not be material; clearly, reducing aggregate demand by 50% will. Where the boundary lies between these two is a matter for debate.
No, reducing it by 50% won't. The fossil fuel sector is about $5 trillion, while the total market capitalization is about $70 trillion. You will only start affecting fossil fuel sector stock prices substantially once you have reduced the total amount of money available for investment in fossil fuel to below $5 trillion, or about 90% reduction in demand.
But at that point, the question is: why are you doing this in the first place? Stock just represents shares in physical assets and future profits. If you actually manage to depress the stock value below what it's worth, there is always one buyer that's always willing to buy: the company itself. If the company itself buys a share worth $100 for $90 because you managed to depress its price, that's an instant $10 profit for all the remaining owners. People will gladly take that deal again and again until the company becomes privately held, you know, like Koch industries for example. The new private owners will thank you profusely for your efforts.
Slashdot Mirror
Correct. That historical perspective isn't mutually exclusive with what I was saying. From the development of government propaganda to price controls, regulations, government funded transportation networks, education, healthcare, retirement, racial policies, and Keynesian stimuli, US progressivism (and the rise of the Democrats) is an outgrowth of the "massive upheavals" of the World Wars and an attempt to perpetuate wartime policies and a military-like structure in post-war civilian life.
"Reducing emissions" doesn't mean government mandates or intervention to reduce emissions.
I didn't say a majority. In our system of government, the popular vote is irrelevant, and for good reason. And as even the WP pointed out, "losing the popular vote in an electoral-college election isn't the same as losing the popular vote in a popular-vote election".
Not at all. I was saying that before spending any money on those areas, we should get political agreement, both domestically and internationally. The burden is on people who want work in those areas to get those agreements first. Personally, I want neither the spending nor the agreements.
Trump needs to make a budget proposal to Congress. As such, he needs to know where money is currently spent, and a judgment on where money should be spent. For that, he needs to collect information. Since the Republican Congress is wary about spending more money on climate science, it makes sense for Trump to pay particular attention to those aspects of spending. He may then choose to submit a budget that greatly reduces spending for climate research, and Congress may choose to approve it. That's the way our government works, and that's why he is requesting that information.
Trump isn't "my candidate", I simply don't suffer from your knee-jerk opposition to him. I didn't vote for him, but so far, I have no problem with his cabinet choices or his pre-inauguration actions.
That's possible. It's also possible that you lose capital by investing. That's why most billionaires in the US today did so through their own work, rather than inheritance.
Why would you want to "get rid of that"? That's where business investments, retirement benefits, government infrastructure investments, insurance, and pretty much every other long term benefit comes from. If you got rid of that, you'd simply end up with a lot of individually owned corporations (like the Koch brothers) that ordinary people would have no ability to invest in.
Such a society doesn't exist. If you have free markets, you get a high degree of inequality, but even the poorest people in a free market economy tend to be better off than they would be in a low inequality society. That is, reducing inequality makes everybody poorer.
This is Twitter's flagship platform, in case you were wondering. Hey, it hasn't sunk yet.
Socialism and communism certainly do. Their principle tenet is to give more power and more information to the state. Once you do that, the people running the state will use that and transform your communist utopia into a dictatorship. Invariably.
You are right that capitalism has nothing to do with state-sponsored murder. At best, you might say that capitalism results in privately sponsored murders, although that seems to be historically much less common.
Well, think about that. In order to perform central economic planning, the state would have to gather data about all the buying preferences, interests, work productivity, skills, capabilities, and motivations of every citizen. Even if that were possible, that kind of data collection would result in a totalitarian state, whose power would invariably be abused by its leaders.
Communism didn't fail because there wasn't enough computational power around (Marx never even considered computational or analytic power as an essential component of communism). It failed because it turned out that even very modest data collection by the state and very modest transfer of economic power to the state immediately resulted in totalitarianism. Collecting more data and giving more economic power to the state isn't going to fix that problem.
Well, you're welcome to read up on fascism and tell me where I'm wrong.
My statement was simply that "Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump."
Now, most of the characteristics of fascism don't apply to either Trump or Clinton: neither is a nationalist or totalitarian, neither advocates fascist gender roles, and neither has the weird relationship with modernism what fascists have.
Where Trump and Clinton differ is primarily on the economy. And the core fascist idea about the economy is:
Now, tell me, does that sound more like Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
Well, fascism is about many ideas. But even if you worry about foreign military intervention, Hillary's record is quite militaristic. You can hardly accuse someone of running on a program of militarism and war mongering who actually ran on statements like this:
Seems like he was running on a promise of less foreign military intervention and less use of the military than Clinton, doesn't it?
Well, yes, we live in a progressive welfare state with high taxes and high regulations that is what Democrats advocate, and it is what populists like. The fact that these economic ideas are popular doesn't change the fact that these are also close to the core tenets of fascist economics. After all, what do you think got the NSDAP or Mussolini elected?
Once you recognize that, you'll recognize why so many people have rejected Hillary's economic and political ideas. See, it isn't just monocled fat cats who vote for lower corporate taxes or less regulation, it's also people who recognize that that kind of approach to economics is broken.
Yes, and those ideas are at the core of the Democrats' and Clinton's political program.
However, calling that "state capitalism" is a misnomer; that kind of economic system is not a form of capitalism, just like "crony capitalism" isn't a form of capitalism; both of those are politically motivated, misleading terms.
It is true that both fascism and socialism have these as goals. The distinguishing feature between them is that socialism advocates public ownership of the means of production, while fascism advocates strongly regulated private ownership of the means of production (what you called "state capitalism" above).
"Libertarian socialism" would be a society in which people voluntarily behave according to socialist principles; there is a better name for that society, it's called "communism", and it's Marx's hypothetical endpoint of history. It doesn't exist.
And the concept of "free market socialism" makes no sense: the whole point of socialism is public ownership of the means of production. You can't have that and simultaneously have anything like a free market.
Some European parties advocate something they call "social democracies" or "democratic socialism", a blend of democracy, regulated market economies, and private enterprise, but in practice, Europe has largely abandoned the idea.
Both Clinton and Trump are equally guilty of such declarations. That's nothing unusual either: it's why we have SCOTUS and Congress.
Well, and none of those programs require large numbers of climate scientists.
I suggest you actually read that article.
It is. Neither Clinton nor Trump are "Nationalist" or "Totalitarian". The most important point after that is "Economy" and "Action", both of which describe Clinton's progressive and activist ideas much better than Trump's capitalism. That's why I was saying "Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump."
Probably the primary ideological idea of fascism is a rejection of capitalism and unearned income, and demands for a "fair" redistribution of wealth; fascist leaders usually are people who become powerful and wealthy through politics, not through running businesses or inheritance. Between Trump and Clinton, Clinton is closer to fascism ideologically than Trump.
At this point, I see no indications that Trump is a threat to democracy. He is simply a thin-skinned, inexperienced businessman-turned-politician. He'll do his job for four years (or maybe eight) and then hand power over to the next president, whoever that may be. So, stop the hyperventilating and fear mongering and enjoy the show.
Yes, but the science on that is settled: people pretty much universally agree that reducing emissions is a good thing in principle.
Why do I think that installing giant space shades or changing the land albedo on a massive scale requires international agreements? Well, gee, why don't you reflect on that a little.
No, I'm suggesting that the executive branch be responsible to Congress and voters. Personally, I want lots of funding for cancer research, and little funding for climate research, because the former does me a lot of good, while the latter is irrelevant to me. Apparently, a lot of other voters think the same way.
Are you illiterate? Where did I say that? I am simply saying that Trump is entirely justified in determining who these people are, how much money we are spending on them, and what they are doing with that money. That's his job as the president (the job, you may have noticed, that he got elected todo). We can have a debate about the spending levels for climate research afterwards, including what people actually want.
As far as I'm concerned, I am happy to remain ignorant about the state of the global climate in 2100 because I'll be dead. I'd much rather see that money spent on medical research because that actually benefits me. It's just the kind of selfish prick that I am.
That's "Dunning Kruger", and you should reflect on that yourself. Your model of government funding appears to be that federal research funding should be awarded without a lot of checks, supervision, public disclosure, or public debate. I happen to disagree.
No, not at all. People sell stocks if they believe that they are likely going to lose money. A crash occurs when many people share the belief that they are going to lose money based on observing each others' behavior. But remember that even in a crash, for every seller, there is a buyer.
The problem with that argument is that I know why you are selling your stock: you don't like fossil fuels. So, your behavior doesn't weaken my confidence in the stock, it merely weakens my confidence in your rationality.
And even if you manage to conceal your motivations and trick others into believing that there is an actual weakness in the stock in order to depress the stock price (probably illegal in the US), you can't fool the corporate management: they know how much profit they are actually making and how much their assets are actually worth, so if the stock becomes substantially undervalued in their own, informed judgment, they will take the company private.
As I was saying: Well, yes, and the same kind of people who believe that stock market prices are a fiction based on irrational investors, and that people who make their livelihood with investments are useless parasites living off unearned income,those are the people who believe that divestment works for reducing stock prices
Here is the range of predictions, including error bars, from the IPCC.
In what way does a foot more or less make much of a difference? A third of the Netherlands lies below sea level; those kinds of modest changes just aren't a big deal for a wealthy nation like ours.
And why would, say, $5 billion / year not be enough to figure that out, instead of the $9 billion we are spending? And maybe we are spending even more.
Budgets and spending need to be justified, and because we don't have unlimited amounts of money, we need to make tradeoffs. It's the job of the Trump administration to figure out where the money is spent right now, whether it is spent wisely, and what tradeoffs to make. If you can make a dollars and cents argument for current spending levels, make it. Waving your hands and saying "it would be very useful" isn't a rational argument about the federal budget.
Personally, I think the rational thing to do is to shift most of that climate change money to research in nuclear and fusion energy, material science, new transportation technologies, and cancer research. Those things are much more "Important to know" than expensive guesses about whether sea levels will have risen by 2 ft or 3ft half a century after I'm dead.
That's bullshit. Not only does it need a radio, new sensors, and new wiring, you're forgetting about the software development, maintenance.
Are you serious? Have you ever bought a car? Do you seriously think dealers are able to set prices based on "excuses"?
Of course they lobbied Congress and regulators; and crony capitalists that they are, Congress and regulators granted the companies' wishes.
The point is that if you take the position that the intelligence community was truthful on Iraq and the only people who lied were Bush and Cheney, then Clinton's vote wasn't just "a mistake", it was a deliberate and callous choice.
In any case, what actually happened is slightly more complex. The intelligence report came in two versions, one classified, one unclassified. The unclassified report was misrepresenting the situation, and that's all Hillary ever bothered to read. That means that Trump is justified in distrusting intelligence reports and Clinton showed a callous disregard for American lives by not doing her homework on such an important issue. That is, both the intelligence community and Hillary come out of the Iraq vote like a basket of deplorables, and "I made a mistake" doesn't cut it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
Well, that logically also means either Hillary Clinton lied about Iraq herself, or that she was derelict in her duty to inform herself, or it means the CIA lied to Hillary Clinton, doesn't it?
Well, it was certainly not the result of US intelligence!
What the release of the Clinton E-mails shows is that (1) the people around Hillary Clinton were incompetent when it came to E-mail security, and (2) Hillary Clinton and the DNC had a lot of dirty laundry.
Who actually released those E-mails hardly matters. Obviously, it was someone who wanted to hurt Hillary. So what? That's how adversarial systems work. I don't really care whether it was the Russians, Assange, or the Saudis, except perhaps to thank them for their efforts.
The Russian psychic warfare department strikes again! We really need to stop those evil Russians meddling with our democracy! Who knows in what other nefarious ways they use their psychic superpowers!
It's adding more and more crap like this to new cars that keeps them from getting cheaper over time. The average new car (in constant dollars) has actually gotten about 30% more expensive since 1980, while the price of a new PC has plummeted.
With current hardware, no. With future hardware, yes. The problem is not much different from SIM cards or credit card chips: secure hardware running in a hostile environment.
The New Yorker piece gets it right.
No, reducing it by 50% won't. The fossil fuel sector is about $5 trillion, while the total market capitalization is about $70 trillion. You will only start affecting fossil fuel sector stock prices substantially once you have reduced the total amount of money available for investment in fossil fuel to below $5 trillion, or about 90% reduction in demand.
But at that point, the question is: why are you doing this in the first place? Stock just represents shares in physical assets and future profits. If you actually manage to depress the stock value below what it's worth, there is always one buyer that's always willing to buy: the company itself. If the company itself buys a share worth $100 for $90 because you managed to depress its price, that's an instant $10 profit for all the remaining owners. People will gladly take that deal again and again until the company becomes privately held, you know, like Koch industries for example. The new private owners will thank you profusely for your efforts.